


Once There Were

by DetectiveCrimson



Series: Pencember 2020 [12]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28471890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveCrimson/pseuds/DetectiveCrimson
Summary: A man invites his grandson to stargaze during a family dinner, he tells him a deeply guarded secret.[Pencember Challenge Day 12 - Prompt; 'Stars.']
Series: Pencember 2020 [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037226
Kudos: 7





	Once There Were

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short one-shot for a challenge my writing group—only two members including myself, feel free to apply—came up with called Pencember, its basically Inktober but writing.
> 
> If you want to take part, you can find the prompt list here -> http://aminoapps.com/p/845jwp <-  
> That said, if you do take part, let me know so I can read your works!  
> ____________________________________________________
> 
> I've been playing games, I have no real defense, don't judge me, I also wrote eleven one-shots and proof-read (using Grammarly, because I didn't have time or patience to read through them all,) twenty-seven in one day.  
> ____________________________________________________
> 
> This is a one-off story none of the characters are named because I'm never using them again and too lazy to give throwaway characters names right now.  
> ____________________________________________________

A boy with fluffy brown hair ran across a snow-white lawn, pale cheeks red from the cold as he laughed joyfully.  
"Hey! Slow down! You might hurt yourself!" His father called from the car, unbuckling his baby sister.  
The boy ignored him, climbing the steps of the porch to get to the door, when he reached it, the door opened, the bo falling through before he could stop himself.  
"Easy there, lad!" His Grandpa warned, chuckling when he caught him.  
"Grandpa!"  
"And how you?" The old man asked, voice light in a teasing manner.  
"It's cold! I can't feel my face," the boy stated, not at all bothered by it, and finding the fact more hilarious than anything else.  
"Is that a fact?- so you can't feel this?" His grandfather asked as he poked one wrinkled figure against the boy's cheek, "Or this?" He asked poking a different spot, "Well how about here?" He asked poking the boy's forehead.  
The boy laughed at his antics, a woman's voice joining the laughter, forcing both to look up, as behind the boy his mother was standing with his sister in her arms.

"There you are."  
"Hey, dad," the woman greeted, hugging the man and kissing his cheek.  
"Oh, you thought I was happy to see you? I meant this little bundle," he said as his daughter handed his granddaughter to him, the old man cooing at her and making gibberish sounds, to which she giggled.  
"She missed you too."  
Looking at his daughter and her little family, he spoke up, "Let's get you inside, someone is so cold they can't feel their face- I won't say who."

The little family stepped past the threshold, the boy looking at all the wooden carvings in his grandparents' house.  
Some were vaguely Viking in appearance, but most were of creatures of different shapes and sizes, creatures his mother had always told him were dragons, myths that had been present in stories for centuries.  
The family celebrated their Christmas together, his grandfather telling stories from his youth as they ate, getting both his son-in-law and grandson to laugh, his daughter pointing out often not to believe the 'crazy old man,' though she said it with a hint of affection and a teasing smile, having inherited her father's humor.

It was as the night quieted, the boy's parents watching a show with his little sister, the girl babbling at some of the characters while their parents fawned over her, that he realized his grandfather wasn't in the room.  
The boy looked for the old man, eventually finding him out on the porch.  
"Grandpa?"  
"I thought you said it was cold out here?" His grandpa asked taking notice of him, a smirk on his face.  
"Not *that* cold, I uh-um, 'embellished?' A little bit."  
The old man laughed before patting down on the wood, the boy sitting beside the man, finally seeing what the old man was holding.  
"Is that important?"  
"This old thing?" He asked, lifting it up.  
The wooden figure was one of the many dragons, it reminded the boy of his pet gecko, but with wings, appendages protruding from its head.  
"What is it?"

The man's face pulled together, contemplating the boy's question before he looked at the boy again with a mischievous spark in his eye.  
"Can you keep a secret? It's an old secret- a family secret."  
"Something only family gets to know?"  
"Exactly, even your mother knows!"  
"...Yeah! It'll be like- uh- a hidden club secret!"  
The older man laughed, slapping his knee slightly before he held the figure out to his grandson, who took it with tentative hands.  
"They're all important you know, the figures, you could say their memories, very old, always new."  
"I don't get it..."

"What do you know of dragons?"  
"They're cool? Girls aren't supposed to like them if you ask my school friends- but they do."  
The man laughed at the boy's answer, ruffling his hair lightly.  
"Next you'll tell me their just stories."  
"Aren't they?"  
His grandfather made a show of looking around before leaning into his grandson's space conspicuously, his grandson leaning the rest of the way to hear what his grandfather was about to share-  
"Their real."  
The boy pulled away quickly, staring at his grandfather in shock.  
"They are?"  
"Oh yes! Very much so- back in the old days, they were everywhere- there were great, grim sky dragons, that nested on the clifftops like gigantic, scary birds- little brown scuttly dragons that hunted down the mice and rats in well-organized packs, preposterously huge sea dragons that were twenty times as big as the big blue whale."  
"Really!?"  
"Yes! Even that little statute resembles one of the great beasts."  
The boy looked from his grandfather to the statue, realizing only then that it had small green gems in its eyes, possibly fake, but beautiful nonetheless.

"But then...what happened to them?"  
The man sighed, losing some of the energy from his rant, "Some say the threat of Humanity forced them to crawl back into the sea, leaving not a bone nor a fang for the violent Humans to remember them by- legend says that when the ground quakes, or lava spews from the Earth, it's the dragons, letting us know they're still here- waiting for us to figure out how to get alone...and some say they never existed at all, purely folklore."  
"But, the truth?"  
The man turned to look at his grandson, his smirk returning, "We know," he said before gesturing to the door, his grandson followed his gesture, noticing the discreet carving above the door, a dragon with a red and black tail that oddly looked like the figure in his hands.  
"We've always known, and we still wait."


End file.
